Teaching Approach

How do We Teach Chinese?

For language study, it would be the basic
for students to use the language in daily life. However, most of
the mandarin courses which are provided by universities and
institutions focus too much on grammar and vocabulary, which cause
students be good at reading while speaking and listening become
their big disadvantage. Therefore what they learned becomes a
so-called mute Chinese. Although in the universities which also
provide Speaking and Listening Courses, students still can’t
achieve their goal of study due to the big size of the classes and
lack of practice.

The Speaking and Listening Course provided by Mandarin
Capital is a main and basic course that students who apply for
Intensive Small Group Chinese Couse and Private Tutoring Chinese
Course would choose. This course would mostly improve students’
Chinese language level and ability. It directly applies daily
topics as the content, so that students can practice what they just
learned straight after the class. Besides, there would be plenty of
time for students to practice during the class, rather than just
sit on the chairs and listen to teacher bala bala throughout the
class.

Grammar would also be an important part
in the Speaking and Listening Course in Mandarin Capital. However,
it is a learning tool rather than the learning object.

The way we explain the grammar helps students
to feel the inner-sense of Chinese language and to gain the ability
of building up sentences with their own. In this way, students
would get more sense on “why structure is like this” and “when we
use the structure” than only knowing “how is the structure formed”.
Besides, students would generally feel that all of the Chinese
grammars act like a related net rather than a bunch of listed
points presents in the grammar books. In Mandarin Capita, our
Speaking and Listening Course is divided into beginner’s level,
elementary level, intermediate lever and advanced level. During
beginner’s level, the course focuses on Chinese pinyin system.
Students would not only get well-trained especially on the five
tones (neutral tone included) which are the key point that make
them understood by other Chinese person, and also get to know
vocabulary such as number, time, date, place, as well as basic
sentence patterns. In this period students would learn vocabulary
within sentence structures or phrases, which would help students to
have a better idea with the usage of the words rather than only
trying to remember the words’ meaning.

For elementary level, Mandarin Capital Speaking
and Listening Course pay more attention on simple dialogues with
single sentence. There are three principals summarized by Lu Ping
when we talk about the Chinese sentence pattern in general.
Principle One, The order is very important and normally we won’t
change sentence’s order. Even if it is a question, we never move
question pronouns at beginning or the end of the sentence. The
order of a question is the same as the order in a describe
sentence. Principle Two, The more important information is usually
at the end of the structures or sentences. For example, when we
show location in Chinese sentences, the location word is always
after the place word. For example to describe on the table, we say
in Chinese zhuozi shang which literally means table on. Because in
this case the place we talk about is the location rather than the
table itself. Principle Three, If we change the normal sentence’s
order in some special sentence patterns, we mean to emphasis the
part which is remaining at the end. In the sentence of “ba (把)” or
”bei 被”, the more important information would always be the result
of the action which remain at the end rather than the real object
which is moved forward.

Compared with elementary level, Mandarin
Capital Speaking and Listening Course for intermediate level would
have two signature differences on vocabulary and grammar
structures. For vocabulary, students would have a strong feeling
that the words they learn are not brightly new anymore. There would
be more and more words students may feel familiar, because they
have learnt other words which have similar meanings. There are
words only used in positive or negative sense, while are only uses
in spoken or written language, or even some words can only be used
in certain particular phrase combination. In this case, Mandarin
Capital Speaking and Listening Course for intermediate level focus
more on distinguishing the words than only explaining. And students
would start to get in touch with the Chinese folk saying so that
they can have a better sense of the language. As for the grammar,
we would consider that the basic single sentence structures are
almost done. For intermediate level students need to know about
what the Chinese logic is for organizing sentences into a
paragraph. This abstract logic is based on ten kinds of specific
relationships of sentences with quite a lot of detailed lining
words, which would be presented in the course. Also the course for
intermediate level requires students to have a lot of reading after
class so that they would enlarge their vocabulary while immersing
themselves in the atmosphere of Chinese.

Mandarin Capital Speaking and Listening Course
for advanced level are designed for students who would like to
speak and think as a real Chinese. There is not too much grammar to
be introduced, but different kinds of rhetoric to get familiar.
Chinese language is a language full of image. It has been proved
throughout the process from the way how Chinese characters are
formed to how Chinese characters form words. And you can also
strongly feel it in how rhetoric affects the language. In order to
use rhetoric in Chinese fluently, students need to read selected
reading materials that come from various sources not only on the
class but also after class. And students would have plenty of time
to practice what they learned with designed topics.